You get home at the end of a long day and collapse on the couch. "I went to school for this!" you say to yourself. "I have experience. Why can't I help my clients have more self-compassion? They are so devastatingly hard on themselves..."

We’ve met countless professionals who work with people suffering from eating and body image problems, who work long hours and rack their brains trying to figure out how to help their clients heal from their debilitating issues. Can you relate? Maybe you dream of finding an approach that truly works. Maybe you wonder if you struggle with these issues too much yourself to really be able to help them.

At The Body Positive, we understand that clinicians are most often people who have endured plenty of their own psychological pain and want to help others. We are here to tell you that working towards a positive relationship with one's body is a lifelong process, and that you are not expected to be perfect in order to help your clients. We believe that the best way for you to open the door to freedom for the individuals you serve is by honoring your own healing first...and you don’t need to do it alone.

After twenty years of helping people transform their relationships with their bodies, The Body Positive has now brought all of our deep, powerful, and effective practices online. And the best part? You can get Continuing Education Hours while doing your own internal work, from the comfort of your home.

Thank you to ourgenerous sponsors!

Course Features

Through the videos in these courses, Connie and Elizabeth bring their warmth, humor, experience, and wisdom right into your home. Learn about the Be Body Positive Competencies, hear their personal stories, and let them guide you through the practices they have been using to help people heal from negative body image for decades.

Close your eyes and get in touch with your past, present, and future selves, connect with the earth, and uncover the roots of your struggles with your body image while Elizabeth’s calm and soothing voice leads you through guided meditations.

Take your personal exploration of the Competencies to a deeper level with our brand new worksheets, which you can print and write on by hand, or type in directly and save on your computer.

Join people from all over the world in our private Be Body Positive Fundamentals Facebook group. Connect with a strong support system and share your experiences and reflections with the people you meet as you move through the courses.

“Body image has historically been a place where even experienced clinicians get ‘stuck’ with clients and feel a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. The concepts and tools taught in The Body Positive training gave our group instant access to powerful interventions that they immediately began using with clients. Additionally, our clinicians felt personally energized and nurtured by the experience . . . In my more than twenty years of experience working with eating disorders in residential settings, I can honestly say that I have never been a part of something so transformational.”

— Jen Gorman, MC, Director of Operations, Center For Discovery

About the Courses

What do we offer?

The Be Body Positive Fundamentals (11.5 CE Hours available) is your entry into our world. The Fundamentals consist of five individual courses, one for each Competency of our Be Body Positive Model. In addition to building your vocabulary and adopting a liberating philosophy to share with your clients, you will also gain tools that are likely to shift the way you inhabit and treat your own body and self. Register for the individual courses that interest you or purchase all five as a bundle and get the fifth course for free!

With our Be Body Positive Clinical Primer (3 CE Hours available), you’ll learn to incorporate the Competencies from the Fundamentals series into your work with clients. Elizabeth shares The Body Positive’s unique treatment approach centered on supporting clients to learn through trial and error about what is best for their unique bodies, fostering a sense of self-confidence that is central to all therapeutic endeavors.

Our Be Body Positive Professional Orientation (25 CE Hours available) includes six courses: the five courses in the Fundamentals Series plus the Clinical Primer. Bonus materials include a free copy of our book, Embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and quiet that critical voice!). This is the most comprehensive of our online offerings, but it does not make you a licensed facilitator.

Our Be Body Positive Facilitator Licensing Package is the most intensive package we offer, and it is an unbelievable deal. This package includes everything that comes with the Professional Orientation, PLUS registration at one of our live, two-day facilitator trainings.* After your live training, you will receive our Be Body Positive group curriculum and will become a licensed Be Body Positive Facilitator. The cost? Just $100 more than what you would pay for only the training. That’s a discount of $267 off the Professional Orientation.

At this time, the two-day live trainings are the only path to becoming a Be Body Positive Facilitator who is licensed to teach our comprehensive curriculum. We offer curriculum for middle schools, high schools, colleges, and for professionals to use in clinical settings.

*You must be available to attend our currently scheduled training on February 22-23, 2019 in San Diego, California to purchase this option. Please review our cancellation policy before you register.

Who can take these courses?

All of our online courses are appropriate for clinicians with a private practice or any member of a treatment team working with individuals suffering from eating and body image problems, including social workers, counselors, dietitians, nurses, psychiatrists, and psychologists. CE Hours are available for Master’s-level therapists and registered dietitians at this time.

Which course should I take?

I'm new to The Body Positive.

We recommend enrolling in the Be Body Positive Professional Orientation, a course bundle that includes all five Be Body Positive Fundamentals as well as the Clinical Primer. In addition to gaining access to the complete collection of our online offerings, you’ll receive a free copy of our book, Embody. Once you complete the Professional Orientation you can take your education further by registering for one of our live, two-day Be Body Positive Facilitator Training. These trainings license you to teach our Be Body Positive curriculum and are only available as a live training. None of the online courses are required to attend the Be Body Positive Facilitator Trainings, but you will get a discount on the training if you’ve already done the Professional Orientation. For more information email info@thebodypositive.org.

I’ve read Embody and/or attended an in-person training or workshop.

Those of you who have worked with us before should already have a deep understanding of our five Core Competencies. But there’s still more to learn in our online courses! Check out our Be Body Positive Fundamentals series and get lifetime access to our compelling videos, soothing audio meditations, and brand-new worksheets, as well as a refresher of all the knowledge you gained with us in the past — it’ll feel like Connie and Elizabeth are right there with you. Or, if you’re feeling good about your relationship with your own body but are interested in developing specialized strategies for utilizing our Competencies in your practice, sign up for the Be Body Positive Clinical Primer. Finally, if you are not yet a licensed Be Body Positive Facilitator (none of the online courses license you to teach our curriculum), sign up for the Be Body Positive Professional Licensing Package. This includes deeply discounted access to our Be Body Positive Professional Orientation AND registration at one of our upcoming live, two-day facilitator trainings. Can’t make it to a training? Start with the Professional Orientation. If you decide to attend a Facilitator Training in the future, you’ll get a $183.50 discount off your registration fee.

Use the Fundamentals in your practice.

Be Body Positive Clinical Primer

This course offers an introduction to how the Be Body Positive Model Competencies can be applied to your clinical practice. Learn how Elizabeth Scott helps her clients listen to and trust their own internal wisdom, and take responsibility for their own self-care.

Meet Your Instructors

Connie Sobczak and Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, founded The Body Positive because of their shared passion to create a lively, healing community that offers freedom from suffocating societal messages that keep people in a perpetual struggle with their bodies. In 2015, Connie and Elizabeth were chosen by La Repubblica, Italy’s leading newspaper, to be on their top 10 list of badass women for their role in founding The Body Positive movement.

Connie Sobczak is the author of Embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and quiet that critical voice!), her book in which she brings the Competencies of the Be Body Positive Model to life, skillfully and lovingly reconnecting readers to their bodies, life force, and beauty. Connie’s experience with an eating disorder in her teen years and the death of her sister Stephanie inspired her life’s work to create a world where all people are free to love their bodies. She has been featured in USA Today, Media Planet, Rebellious Magazine for Women, the Lady Brain Show, the San Francisco Bay Area’s local Fox news, and more. Connie’s passion is watching the light that emerges when people recognize and embrace their magnificent, authentic selves.

Elizabeth Scott has practiced psychotherapy in Marin County, California for twenty-seven years, specializing in eating disorders treatment. She refined the core Competencies of the Be Body Positive Model to be appropriate for the treatment, as well as the prevention, of eating problems. Elizabeth is passionate about her work because she believes that a healthy self-image is an essential aspect of a person’s development. She credits her mother Lynn, a feminist therapist, for communicating a positive message about women’s bodies that allowed her to grow up with an abundance of self-love. Elizabeth’s discovery of African dance as a teenager and her exploration of improvisational dance throughout her life sustain her great appreciation for her body and its capacity to express pleasure and vitality.